Macaulay Culkin Cooks Up Tribute Band to Velvet Underground and Pizza

Yahoo Music

Jon WiederhornDecember 9, 2013

photo courtesy of Bandcamp

Perhaps in an effort to compete with Crispin Glover and Corey Feldman for weirdest pop culture has-beens, ex-child star Macaulay Culkin — who last received IMDB screen credit credit in 2010 for voiceover work for for the "Robot Chicken DP Christmas Special" — has been spending time paying musical tribute to two of his favorite inspirations, the late Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground and, uh, pizza.

Culkin's group, the Pizza Underground, cooked up a demo of Velvets covers and Lou Reed's biggest solo hit "Walk on the Wild Side" revamped with lyrics about pizza delivery, pizza ingredients, and the process of ordering pizza.

The entire demo is eight-minutes and 49 seconds long, and each song melts into the next. It was recorded live at Culkin's house on Nov. 11 and is about the same fidelity as early Velvets demos. The Pizza Underground delivered the songs Dec. 2 and they're available at a price of your choosing on BandCamp.

Culkin;s shining moment might be the kazoo solo on "Take a Bite of the Wild Slice," a spoof, of course, of "Walk on the Wild Side."

Check out these lyrics: "Gina came from Sicily, made her pies traditionally/ Pizza Hut said fill you must put some cheese inside that crust/ Say hey, Gina, take a bite of the wild slice."

The album art for the Pizza Underground demo is a Photoshopped version of Velvet Underground's debut album that depicts the band holding a pizza box instead of a record jacket.

According the U.K. paper The Guardian, the Pizza Underground was not concocted in the wake of Reed’s death on Oct. 27, 2013. The band actually formed in early 2012 and has played a Lou Reed tribute at New York's Sidewalk Café.

Half-baked, for sure, but the entire demo is over before you can finish a piping hot slice of pizza.